All the talk about iOS 7 is, rightly or wrongly, revolving around the aesthetic changes that Apple has made, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of alterations under the hood. Game Center, a feature often ignored by many, is receiving some much needed love with this update and those pesky cheaters are top of the agenda.

Whilst adding new Game Center features that aim to make recognizing cheaters as easy as possible for developers, Apple is also adding other development tools that will make the whole Game Center experience better as a whole. Improved leaderboards and challenges are just two of the changes coming in iOS 7.

With rampant cheating and high scores that have obviously tampered with, Game Center is set to receive its biggest overhaul yet, and most people won’t even notice what’s changed…

When it comes to dealing with those pesky cheats, Apple’s aim is to cut them off at the source. With iOS 7, Apple is integrating signed submissions to its Game Center leaderboards, meaning the company can reject score submissions that have been tampered with. It will also allow developers to set score ceilings based on realistic in-game totals, meaning those trying to submit huge scores will simply find their fake totals do not show on leaderboards.

Developers will also now have access to new tools that will help them recognize suspicious activity and to then manage the players accordingly. Cheaters could potentially be blocked should the developer see fit.

Beyond recognizing and dealing with cheats, Apple is also adding new Game Center features that will help developers make more compelling offerings to fans of leaderboards and multiplayer gaming.

Developers will now be able to have up to 500 leaderboards in their games, with the ability to categorize those leaderboards based on things like difficulty now being added to the developer’s arsenal. These leaderboards can also now be managed directly from iTunes connect.

Multiplayer games will also benefit from improved challenges, with a new friend picker and message composer being added to challenges, and developers will be able to take finer control of how those challenges behave. Developers could specify a particular car to be used for a challenge, for example.

Other improvements are afoot, such as support for game pads and improvements to turn-based multiplayer. Let’s hope that Game Center becomes more than something we try to avoid launching in the future!

Are you a fan of Game Center, or do you find it lacking in features, too?

I tried the 2147483647 high score trick…. it got old really quickly because the game was no fun anymore.

JeanMarc

Really who cares about cheaters on Game Center. Gamecenter is no Xbox or psn. It doesn’t bother me at all. Plus cheaters will always Find a way to cheat.

rasengan720 .

Does this means if I cracked in app purchases I might not be able to use the app in the future?

n0ahcruz3

I achieved over 1500+ score fruit ninja arcade mode thinking i was on the top 15 on the leaderboard, but to my disappointment i was on the bottom pile. i deleted fruit ninja. Hope apple fix this issue

seyss

it still won’t stop people from easily cheat in Game Center.. I did it once and it was really easy. no point for doing it since leaderboards are stupid to begin with. it’s you vs those lifeless asians that play all day

Sn0wFl4kz

Apple should find a way to stop the In-App Purchase Cracks like iappfree or what the tweak was called!

Quick question, who actually uses Game Center? In fact, who even cares about Game Center?

TuNuT

LOL! I don’t even know what it is used for and always throw it in my trash folder!

James Branham

I hide it completely with springtomize 2. LOL!

burlow

I use it to pair up in 2 player games

BearManPig

i still am waiting for the option to send messages to my game center friends…

gaurabmega

That’s one features missing from GC.

Dady King

I use my phone for social networking and emailing..
Game Center dosent matter to me bz I just play game for fun .. Not for highest score..life my iphone professionally .. I utilise each and every way to smooth my work flow

Zelox

Well cheaters never fail so even if they patch this cheaters will come uo with another hack same with ios 7 Evasi0n will get make another jailbreak and this really doesnt bother me

Falk M.

Rather give me an option to add notes to contacts in GameCenter, so I remember those weird names of friends, maybe append their address book details in the profile if the GC account is linked to an apple ID of one of my contacts.

Also, for fucks sake let me message people on GC, maybe if they are contacts in my addressbook at least and then make that a conversation that’s also logged by the Messages app….
(centralizing and decluttering logs, so stock app messaging can always be found in the appropriate app called Messages)

Hi

The GameCenter design is horrendous.

Ricky

They should fix the pirating too and clear the jailbreak community name. But this is a great move

Girish

i play most games if only they support game center!
i spend most of my time playing on ma ip5 rather than on ma ps3 😉
so for me it really matters to block those cheating scores >.<

Leviscus Tempris

Good point. I don’t use Game Center. I like to have certain games full unlocked and I do cheat to get it. But I never let games access Game Center so at least one person keeps their cheating to themselves. I don’t even do it for the scores I just like to see all of the game.

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Game Center Games

I am 385 in the world, an avid Game Center player. I have made a website dedicated to my account, but the hacking and cheating is killing this for me. Look at the top players ranked by total points, it’s so obvious.

Lawndarticus

So now with IOS 7 the leader boards only show the all time score with no info about weekly or daily scores. Personal standings are gone. I thought it was suppose to get better. Now its completely useless. I dont even know what my standing is anymore.

Adan

You guys need to feature this issue again, there is a lovely ‘report’ button on every user. I’ve just spent half an hour reporting the 75 top scorers of Plants vs Zombies 2 Pyramid of Doom leaderboard. They all had the ridiculous score of 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. Everyone should report them, maybe then we will be rid of this pest.

I have the Ultimate Park

great Idea to prevent cheaters from faking high scores. Please give us back weekly and daily totals. That was my favorite part of game center. It’s convenient to see where you rank each day.

Matthew

They have encoded the values with gzip so we can’t edit it with a proxy until they add a decoder to the program then hackers will hit the leader board again lol

CheatSource

The only problem is, cheaters usually only cheat on games that are majorly popular. I’m pretty sure 95% of big game developers won’t even care, as long as they rake in cash. The only majorly popular game out of the hundreds I’ve played was Haypi Kingdom. It has a block on scores that go over the limit, 640 I think.

CheatSource

Also, yes, I know my username is very ironic.

Jackalope57

GameCenter and the developers still won’t do anything. Why have a leaderboard? What’s the point? I spent many unhealthy hours getting first place only to have some cheater put a score just a few points higher than mine. The developer (Backflip Studios) tells me they can’t do anything. I sent them this article and they didn’t reply back. I sent it again and they just apologized and said they couldn’t do anything.

Adan

Well, Backflip Studios are lying. They CAN remove any entries they wish, I know for a fact that other developers can, and do it. It might be that can’t/won’t be bothered.